


Sound and Silence

by starsandtrucks



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga, Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: AU, All characters are FMA, Angst, Author has been a riot at cocktail parties while telling uninterested parties about worldbuilding, Author has spent too much time on worldbuilding, Author regrets nothing, Canonical and non, Character Death, Coercion, Collateral Damage, Crossover, Drifting, F/F, F/M, Gen, Giant Robots, Kaiju, M/M, Military Experimentation, Mind Manipulation, No Pacific Rim characters appear in this, Non-Explicit Sex, Sacrifices made for the greater good, The Great Desert is now the Great Ocean, Violence, robots vs monsters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:53:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22342108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starsandtrucks/pseuds/starsandtrucks
Summary: Riza allowed her musings to drift aimlessly as the hot water surged over her shoulders, little puffs of thought that she didn’t try to catch and examine.  Her eyes closed as Roy’s arms encircled her, running a soapy washcloth over her back with particular care, and she tucked her head under his chin.How much of this is drift, she thought, and how much is history?  We’ve been together such a long time.She could feel him smile into her hair.“It’s not important.  We’re together.  That’s all that matters.”Fullmetal Alchemist/Pacific Rim AU.They're at the end of the line, and the only way out is through.
Relationships: Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang
Comments: 3
Kudos: 16





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [That Hoopy Frood (That_Hoopy_Frood)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/That_Hoopy_Frood/gifts).



> The Great Desert is now the Great Sea.

Prologue

**_December 1913_ **

It was dim, in the room. The only source of light was from a wall sconce that pointed directly upwards, so that the light diffused out across the ceiling. No windows let out to the world beyond; there was nothing to make the passage of any kind of time. The monotony of featureless walls was broken only by a featureless door, its matte paint absorbing all of the light that hit it, not even offering the sole occupant the entertainment of seeing his reflection. The mattress was hard and offered scant protection from the concrete slab on which it was situated. The only stimuli he had was the bite of the sharp edge where it bit into the back of his thighs, and the slow rasp of the manacles across his wrists as he twisted them back and forth. It would have been enough to drive him mad, had he not already been so.

The lack of any distraction didn’t matter to him. He had enough visions to keep him occupied; swirling colors for which he had no name danced behind his closed eyelids, grating voices whispered their treachery into his ears. The more he turned his focus inward, the further out he could cast himself. The attempt at keeping him locked up, locked away, was, in a sense, futile - he knew it, they knew it, he knew they knew it. He would have laughed, if he could have remembered how to. 

Once, long ago, when he had been able to tell the difference between hours and decades and seconds, he had begged them to kill him. The weight of too many minds had laid heavily upon him, firing across every synapse and nerve like a brushfire. Death at anyone’s hand would have been a blessing, but he was given no quarter, and learned to bear his burden. He had surrendered to them then, completely, and had stopped being bothered by more than one voice coming from his mouth whenever he spoke. 

He liked to speak; to hear his voice mingle with the others’, to try to get a rise out of the stone-faced men who guarded him. Under no circumstance did they ever respond to him, or drop any hint of information from the outside world. 

Sometimes he told them that it didn’t matter, that he could see everything that was happening, regardless of how well they tried to sequester him. He would taunt them with his knowledge, tell them exactly how it felt to crush their cities beneath his feet, rend the landscape into pieces with his hands. Other times, he would describe all of the things he planned to do to them, mapping out their tortures at his masters’ hands in exquisite detail. At all times, they remained stoic, never so much as a twitch of an eyelid to betray their actual feelings on his ravings. Not even when the words that welled up inside his mind and spilled from his mouth were less than abstract; when ‘destroy’ and ‘land’ became ‘rip’ and ‘tear’ and ‘body’ and ‘child’ and ‘blood’. He would revel in the wanton carnage that sluiced through his memory, rolling it around under his tongue like candy, giggling in his glee.

He knew it was only a matter of time before he was released from his cage. His masters were sending their beasts into this world more often now, the waves of attacks growing closer together. “Soon,” he whispered to no one in particular, in more voices than he had throats, “Soon the door will be opened, and the bridge made fast, and we will come through, and come through, and come through.” He could picture it in their mind’s eye: a permanent portal between two worlds, a rip in the universe through which anything could pass: death, destruction, salvation. 

His grin was a rictus on his pale face, and his fingers traced the letters _s o o n_ against the air.

…

“That’s the last thing he said?”

“Yes, sir. Sergeant Lima is still monitoring the feeds, and will update the file as needed.” 

“Thank you. Please leave the transcripts on my desk.”

“Sir.” There was some shuffling as the aide replaced the papers into their folder and arranged them next to his calendar. 

“Dismissed.”

The aide saluted and left, carefully closing the office door behind him with a soft click of the latch, leaving the two men within in an uneasy silence. The west facing windows caught what remained of the day’s light as the sun dipped down to the horizon, painting both the sky and the room in pink and orange. The afternoon’s beauty was made all the more poignant by the aide’s report, and Alex Louis Armstrong felt his heart constrict in his chest at the thought of everything in their beautiful world that they stood to lose.

“Well. That certainly feels dire.”

Alex turned his face from the sunset to his companion, who stood next to him at the window, hands clasped behind his back in a deceptively relaxed stance. King Bradley had mastered the art of appearing at ease in any situation long ago, but those who knew him well would be able to see the tension along the lines of his broad shoulders. 

“His ravings have taken a different turn, recently. He seems more sure of what he’s saying, more confident.” Bradley’s frown was nearly imperceptible, a slight downturn of his mustache. “I don’t like it.”

“It...warrants concern.” 

Bradley left Alex standing at the window and walked over to his desk, sitting down heavily in his chair, rubbing at his forehead with his eyes closed in a rare moment of vulnerability. Alex followed, taking the chair opposite, concern in his bright blue eyes.

“God, Alex, we’ve been at this for what... twelve years?”

“Thirteen, come summer.” 

“Thirteen years and what have we got to show for it?”

“Well,” the larger man paused as if considering his options, “we have a very well oiled war machine, all things hanging in the balance. I’m certain it’s equal to the task of defeating whatever they throw at us.”

Bradley looked up, then, meeting Alex’s gaze squarely. “Are you so sure?” 

Truth be told, Alex wasn’t. He tried to keep that uncertainty from showing in his face; keep it buried in the back of his mind, the way he did every waking moment. The only time he allowed those thoughts to intrude was deep in the night, when he’d wake from his nightmares in a cold sweat. Then, and only then, would he allow himself the luxury of laying down his optimism and letting the despair that hovered at the edge of his mind to overcome him. 

Bradley continued. “Because the fact is, we’re very slowly losing this war.” His voice was not unkind but Alex felt his words as a physical blow. “The kaiju are getting bigger. We’re sustaining more casualties. The Jaegers that make it out of a fight are sustaining higher amounts of damage. The coasts are decimated, the refugee situation is on the verge of imploding every other day. I’m not sure how much we can take.”

Alex thought that he should feel stunned, to have Bradley lay out their entire plight in a few short sentences, but these were all things that he had already known, although he had more or less refused to acknowledge them. Hearing them said out loud just made him feel drained, an exhaustion he could feel down to his bones. “So what’s the answer?” he replied. “We can’t just give up.”

“No. Surrender is not an option, it never has been.”

“King, I don’t know what you’re driving at. We can’t use the bombs; we can’t physically increase Jaeger size-- I don’t know--”

“We have another option.”

The air in the room seemed to suddenly thin, and Alex thought for a moment that he wouldn’t be able to draw enough into his lungs to take a full breath. Everything was still, a moment hanging just outside of time. “You can’t mean?”

“I’m not sure yet, but it looks as if we need to look at everything in our arsenal and put a stop to this once and for all. I will be considering all of our options. _All of them_.”

“It’s just a theory. You don’t know if it will work. It might fail.”

“Nonetheless. We must try.” 

Alex leaned his elbows on his knees, bowing his head. “If you’re sure. It’s a road we can’t come back from once we start down it; you understand that, don’t you?” He looked up, his blue eyes piercing. 

Bradley’s responding chuckle was small, mirthless. “A bridge, he said, didn’t he?” He gave Alex a half smile, and the glint in his eye was dangerous. “Let’s meet them halfway and give them hell. After all,” he mused, “bridges can be destroyed.”


	2. Chapter 1

**_January 1914_ **

Riza Hawkeye stood on the end of the breakwall, beneath a monitoring tower. Although dawn sat on the horizon and curled its pale fingers into the air, she stood in the darkness of the night, flickering in and out of shadow with each beat of the tower’s flashing lights. The storm from the day before had passed; the water was calm now, the tide gone out, and a gentle breeze sent clouds scudding across the sky to harry the stars. 

Her early morning runs provided the only solitude in otherwise busy days, but she rarely came out along the breakwalls – the sea could make just as much noise as the maintenance bays when the mood took it, and deny her the peace she sought— but on days like this, when it lay spent and prostrate after a storm, she liked to come out and look at the Shatterdome from a distance, set within the landscape like a jewel in a foil. Distance lessened the deadliness of its fortifications and lent it a certain kind of beauty. The titular dome sat in the center of clusters of other buildings, surrounded by a vast tarmac, the staging area for all kinds of mission support vehicles; the tarmac, ringed in by canon whose aircraft warning lights twinkled in the gloom, dropped off abruptly, straight down to the waves. What could be taken for a cliffside in the darkness, she knew, were really the massive doors from which the Jaegers were launched. The only effective line of defense they seemed to have in a war they were slowly losing. 

She drew in a deep breath and put the war and her place in it out of her mind, ignored the pull of other things on her consciousness. Instead she focused on the brightening sky, the damp chill and tang of the salt air, the way its moisture clung to her skin, and started to run. 

The coastal climate was very different from the crisp, dry winter air of her childhood home, but it reminded Riza of the hills of her youth nonetheless. The breeze tousled her hair just as it did in a childhood spent running through the woods, careless and carefree; these days, her daily run was the only time she could truly recapture the memories of what it felt like not to be aware of a wider and darker world. The steady beat of foot against ground, the measured cadence of air in and out of her lungs, the thump of her heart in her chest, reminded her of other places, other Januaries. Sometimes, she could hang onto that sense of peace, of beforeness. Before the Kaiju; before the war; before her life as a soldier who had abandoned childish games and now only ran in straight lines on even paths. Every morning she ran and reconnected with that part of herself; every morning she left that part of herself behind. She wondered, abstractly, what it would feel like to stop running, and just be still. 

She shook her head impatiently, clearing it. Those kinds of thoughts were dangerous; she didn’t have the luxury of looking that far forward. The battles they fought were uphill, and the only way out was through; best to keep focused, and leave her longings on the breakwall for the sea to keep until she could return for them. 

At the gate, she turned right, heading up a small service road that curved around the bottom of the property and wound its way up to the ‘'Dome itself. Even at this early hour, it was bustling. A quarter mile ahead of her, the new batch of cadets were being put through their paces by one of the drill sergeants; two of Fullmetal Nomad’s engineering crew passed her in the opposite direction. A truck trundled down to the lower maintenance bay next to the cove. Somewhere beyond her sight, past the wall that rose over her head, she could hear the beat of Jumphawk blades as they tore through the dawn sky. The noises blended together, simultaneously annoying and soothing her. The Shatterdome was chaotic, but for better or worse, it was home. For the past eight years, it had been the only one she’d had. 

Riza entertained a fleeting glimmer of pity for her childhood self, for all the potential futures that had been snatched away from her. It wasn’t something she allowed herself to dwell on often – all the things that could have been, had monsters from the depths not emerged from the sea to shatter everything she thought she knew. She had built her world back up, although it was different from anything she could have ever imagined it being. 

The night before the first Kaiju had destroyed the city of Xerxes, she had sat with her mother and father at the kitchen table, playing a board game. Fireflies had dipped in and out of the grasses beyond the back door, propped open to let in the warm breeze. She had only been fourteen then. The creature’s rampage had killed tens of thousands of people before the weapons engineered by her father had brought it down, but at a great cost. Those who had not been able to escape the Kaiju had been killed by the counterattack; people said that there hadn’t even been bodies left to bury. She had never seen her father smile again.

That last peaceful evening was encapsulated in amber in her mind, still and heavy and warm, and everything that came after was cold and hard, passing in a blur: the cot in the refugee barracks, the gun in her hand, the extension of her consciousness through a colossal metal frame. Even the Drift was toned blue and silver, and the memories that skipped through it and linked her mind to another’s were in a constant state of motion. Glimpses of her past, of not-her-past. 

She wondered what that other Riza, the one in the world without monsters, would have been like. Would she have had a career, children? Would she have met Roy? 

_Roy_.

She had heard of him - her father couldn’t help bragging about his brilliant protégé - but her thoughts had been otherwise occupied, by schoolwork, by trees unclimbed, by butterflies uncaught. They had been on entirely different paths until that first Kaiju had risen from the sea, tearing into the landscapes of their lives and laying a new road before them, which they wound up walking together. 

_No_ , she decided. 

They wouldn’t have met, and if they did, their relationship couldn’t be what it was now. Neither of them would have had the motivation of revenge to drive them into the arms of war. 

Roy Mustang, handsome, accomplished, tempestuous, would have been bound for greatness regardless of his circumstances. He was the type to see the top of the mountain and claw his way up to it, no matter what it took. She was fairly confident that, left to her own devices, she would have been content with simplicity; a house in the country, a garden to care for. Maybe she would have run a flower shop.

She lifted her face to the sun, savoring its warmth on her face. Ultimately, her questions didn’t matter. Worrying about the past was pointless, when the future weighed on them so heavily. Revenge didn’t matter, almost-- everyone had a K-Day story. 

_Almost_. Her sardonic chuckle was little more than an overemphasized huff in her otherwise steady breathing. 

Even if revenge was no longer the sole driving factor of their lives - now there was duty, responsibility, honor, obligation - it was etched into the opening chapter of their story. The title plate one page beyond the prologue. 

The loss of his best friend. The loss of her mother, her home. The disappearance of her father. The realization that that first Kaiju - later called Deofol - had been the beginning of many. They’d seen the way forward, and taken it. The Amestris Kaiju Defense Corps had offered them a new home and some kind of sense of purpose, and they had grabbed it and kept it close. She wasn’t naive enough to think that they would ever gain a true sense of closure, or satisfaction, but they could at least protect everyone they could from the forces that had blighted their lives. She had joined the military as soon as she turned eighteen, and transferred to the Corps eight months later; just after her nineteenth birthday, she and Roy climbed into a Jaeger and into one another’s heads. In the intervening years, outside of the occasional early morning reflections, she hadn’t looked back. 

Now the time she allotted to those idle reflections had passed, each footstep carried her father from the hypothetical, forward into whatever the day held in store.

She steadied her breathing, steadied her mind. 

She could feel him before she could see him – with a connection like theirs, there was no sneaking up on one another; there were no surprises. It was a seamless moment – one minute, she was alone, and the next, he was beside her, matching her footfall for footfall, breath for breath, as if she had never been apart from him at all. The most natural thing in the world.

After running in silence for another quarter mile, Roy turned to Riza. 

“A meeting with the brass has been set for 0900,” he said, before blowing an errant spike of hair out of his eyes. “All officer hands on deck.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Roy’s tone was light but there was tension behind his words. Marshall Curtis didn’t often call staff meetings, preferring to hand out missions and assignments individually or in small strike groups. For her to call a meeting of all Ranger teams and Jaeger officers was unusual, and not necessarily indicative of good news.

They slowed down to a walk as they passed into one of the ‘'Dome’s many side doors, slipping easily through the throngs of personnel. The morning announcements chime sounded over the loudspeaker system, echoing weirdly as it bounced around a wide corridor that had been built with everything but acoustics in mind. 

“Good morning, South Shatterdome.” Kain Fuery, lighthearted Head Communications Engineer and the voice of what was unofficially referred to as Shatterdome Radio, came over the loudspeaker just as the chime tapered off. “It is 7:00am on Wednesday, January 10, 1914. Currently, the sky is clear, and the thermometer is reading 58 degrees, with 55% humidity and a dew point of 44. A cold front will move across the water this evening, bringing rain and—”

Kain’s voice was suddenly drowned out by the rumble of an engine and the beeping of a proximity alarm. A cargo tractor passed them on the right, hauling a cart filled with spools of cable in the direction of the main hangar. The driver, sporting a Corona Raptor patch on his sleeve, raised a hand in a brief greeting as he sped by, cheerfully disregarding the Shatterdome vehicle speed limit signs. A forklift driver further down the hall was not quite as cavalier with her load as she carefully maneuvered a large crate into an elevator. Wrapped in yellow caution tape, the crate’s seams were hit by the hallway’s fluorescent lighting, and a sheen of bright blue reflected back. _Kaiju guts_. 

The color drew Riza’s attention like a magnet. It always did. There was nothing else quite like it. She didn’t like to look at it, exactly; it was too bright to be natural; too weird to be pretty. It seeped across the eye like oil across water, uncanny and strange. Mostly, she recoiled whenever she saw it, whether in out in the field after a drop or behind glass in the labs. But a small part of her was fascinated by it, wanted to understand it. It was an uncomfortable feeling, being caught between disgust and fixation over something as trivial as a color. 

Sensing her shift in mood, Roy tracked her line of sight and frowned. “Samples from the last attack on their way to the Central labs, probably,” he said, more to break her concentration than because the information was necessary. She nodded and when Roy tugged at her elbow, she let herself be pulled away down the corridor that lead to the main hangar.

They passed through an open set of heavily armored double doors and into the vast space beyond. Eight maintenance bays were arranged in a semicircle along the edges of the hangar; six to house the South’s full complement of six Jaegers, and two for backup. Gantries and catwalks spun themselves across the space beneath the ‘'Dome, allowing access to the Jaegers from every conceivable angle. The ‘'Dome itself terminated at its highest point some three hundred and sixty feet above. Behind them, the War Clock blinked, a baleful reminder that they were fighting their battles on borrowed time. 

The last Kaiju to hit the Southern Patrol Zone had been the day before; the last to hit the Central Patrol Zone, four days before that. Southern Shatterdome had been fortunate in that Meteor Assassin’s Rangers had returned alive, although the Jaeger sustained some heavy damage. Central had not been so lucky. Eclipse Avenger had been fielded against a category IV Kaiju, but had been unable to overcome it, and so Laurel Sentinel had been sent to Eclipse’s aid. Laurel Sentinel was destroyed, its Rangers killed. 

She hadn’t known the Tringham brothers well; they had only been deployed on one mission together during a double drop near the borders of their respective patrol zones, but they had struck her as being good kids. They were around the same age as the Elrics; too young, maybe, to be battling otherworldly creatures. Barely beyond boyhood, they should have been playing with their friends, not sacrificing their lives on the battlefield. That they had killed their target, wrapping it in a fatal embrace and dragging it down into the water while firing everything they had at it, underscored the tragedy of their wasted potential. They had drowned in their conn pod, the Kaiju’s spines having pierced their Jaeger’s protective shielding and flooded it with seawater. 

The AKDC had a sense of glamour about it; how could it not? The Jaegers were like something out of a dream, sent to fight nightmares; the Rangers who piloted them, heroes that seemed to step out of another time, legends in the flesh. The reality was different, harsher. Various jokes circulated in the ‘'Dome’s hallways, but the punchline was always the same: Rangers don’t have retirement accounts, because they aren’t going to need them. The Kaiju got stronger, larger, with each passing attack, and it was all the AKDC could do to keep up. Cadets came up through the ranks, became Rangers, and eventually earned their spot on the Memorial Wall at Central. Shatterdomes could seem like cold, unfeeling places. Deaths were dealt with perfunctorily, new Rangers found, Jaegers repaired, and then the whole cycle started over again. No one was ever given time to mourn. Riza thought about what it would be like, if they won the war, if they gained the space for grief, if she was even around to find out. Roy plucked at her sleeve again, once more pulling her out of her thoughts. 

South Shatterdome was home to six Jaeger teams. Riza named them silently as they passed each bay: Corona Raptor; Meteor Assassin, crawling with techs repairing the damage from the last fight; Brawler Aurora; November Witch. Fullmetal Nomad with its red and black color scheme stood out from the rest, almost gaudy. Flame Tempest was at the very end, closest to the scramble doors, its deep blue armor outlined in orange and gold. The thrill that tingled up her spine was familiar; eight years, and she still never got over the sight of it. 

Sparks surrounded the Jaeger as the techs worked on installing some of the upgrades that Winry had promised Roy and Riza a month prior. Its flamethrower turbines glowed from deep within as they were started up and tested; new fuel cells were carefully loaded into the plasma rifle that ran down the left arm. 

Winry had talked about adding a specialized rifle scope, insisting at the time that it would give Riza and Roy the best advantage in the field, and it looked like she would be right. Outside of Fullmetal Nomad, which was truly Winry’s baby, she took the best care of Flame Tempest, and it showed. Her takes on weapons were ingenious and unexpected, and never failed to throw a Kaiju for a loop. 

They hurried along behind the massive feet of the Jaeger, ducking under extension cords and avoiding oil spills, heading towards Hall A. Hall A, unimaginatively named, was the corridor that functioned as the main artery of the Shatterdome’s interior, linking the Jaeger bays to the administrative offices and staff areas. The workday was in full swing now, the ‘'Dome coming to life as the day shift replaced the skeleton night crews. They half listened to the news dispatches that Kain read out; results of local elections, an upcoming festival, and the Wall program’s efficacy being brought into question by pundits in Central. Drivel, but a welcome part of the routine. 

“Breakfast?” Roy asked hopefully. Riza nodded; it was only 0700; they had some time to kill before they had to be at the meeting, so they turned into the mess hall. 

At this hour of the morning the mess hall was a teeming hive of activity. It functioned as the heart of the facility, simultaneously a kitchen, dining room, and rec room. Night crew workers getting off shift shot the shit with each other in small groups; others, groggy from sleep, rubbed their eyes and poured coffee down their throats in an effort to will themselves awake. A cadet class worked their way through the food line behind their commanding officer; dressed alike in standard issue AKDC t-shirts and track pants, they reminded Riza of ducklings following their mother. 

Riza grabbed two sets of plates, silverware, and napkins while Roy filled two heavy-duty ceramic mugs with coffee, adding a dollop of milk and a spoonful of sugar to each. They filed through the breakfast line, Roy filling his plate with eggs and hashbrowns, Riza helping herself to bacon and toast with butter and jam. Riza nicked a couple of pastries off a tray as they moved toward the banks of long tables that took up most of the room, heading for a small cluster of people waving in their direction.

Sliding their trays onto the table, Riza and Roy squeezed themselves onto the bench. To Roy’s right sat Jean Havoc, blearily stirring sugar into his coffee after pulling overnight duty, but smiling; across from him sat his copilot Heymans Breda, idly munching on a breakfast sausage as he worked his way through a crossword puzzle. With Kaiju attacks occurring more frequently for the past several months, Marshal Curtis had instituted a weekly overnight roster, with one Jaeger on call and ready to deploy at a moment’s notice. Brawler Aurora had pulled the short straw for this week.

“Quiet night?” asked Roy conversationally, taking a bite of muffin. 

“Luckily. I almost wish it hadn’t been - then the loss of sleep wouldn’t have been in vain,” commented Breda, without taking his eyes off his puzzle.

“No kidding,” Havoc chimed in, “this rotation is hell on my love life. I had to cancel two dates for this week.”

At this, Breda looked up briefly, a slight scowl on his face. “You should stay away from those Jaeger flies, man, they’re just gonna get you into trouble.”

“That’s not a very polite way to refer to Havoc’s girlfriends, Breda.” Vato Falman, on Riza’s left, spoke up disapprovingly. Breda rolled his eyes but refrained from further comment. There was something of the librarian about Falman; tall and spare, his serious demeanor didn’t allow him to banter back and forth the way Havoc and Breda did, but there was a warmth about him endeared him to others. His eidetic memory was highly prized by the others in the K-Science division, and Riza appreciated his seriousness; the 'Dome sometimes took on an air of a club or a sports team, and it was nice to have someone around that didn’t seem to be infected by boisterousness.

Riza blew gently on her coffee and took a sip, idly looking around the room while half paying attention to her friends’ conversation. 

Against the far wall the Renton siblings were arguing again, sniping at one another animatedly. Fraternal twins, they were noted for their constant good-natured bickering, a back and forth that didn’t seem to stop even in the midst of battle. Rumor had it that one of the November Witch techs had a notebook filled with Gemma’s more… interesting invective. It was said that listening in on the comms during a November Witch fight would turn one’s ears blue. Although he was certainly no saint, Jeremy didn’t quite match his sister’s intensity of vocabulary. 

Corona Raptor’s Rangers strode in and headed for the food line. Out of a conn pod, their mismatched statures caught people off guard; Dolcetto Piedmont was small and stocky, while Roa Navarre was nothing short of massive. In a conn pod, it didn’t seem to matter - their fighting style was seamless and ruthlessly effective. 

Over Breda’s shoulder, she could just make out the top of Winry’s blonde head, her hair pulled up and out of her way as she pored over a blueprint spread out on the table in front of her. 

Jaeger techs and K-Science staff played cards nearby. Two maintenance techs replaced one of the fluorescent lights that had been on the fritz, watched closely by Van Hohenheim, who had an interest in the handyman’s arts. After several incidents that either involved blood or a fall from a height or both, Marshal Curtis had officially banned him from trying to help. His sons were nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s Ed?” she asked Havoc, who followed her line of sight and nodded in understanding.

“Downstairs with Al. Been down there for a while now. I think they’re both going to be at the meeting.”

“Al too?”

“That’s what I heard.”

“I see.” She nibbled on her toast. “What about Thomas and Staton?”

“Thomas should be there - her injuries weren’t as severe as his - but knowing Staton, he’ll find a way to drag his sorry carcas there. He’s got stress fractures up and down his right leg, but he’s insisting it’s just a sprain. If I was a betting man -”

“You are a betting man, which is why you owe me so much money - “

“Breda, shut it! If I were a betting man,” Havoc continued, raising an eyebrow at Breda that dared him to interrupt again, “I’d wager that they won’t be back in combat for another three months.”

Roy leaned forward, elbows on the table. “You think that’s why she’s calling the meeting? Jaeger rotation?”

“It would make sense,” Falman said, scratching his temple in thought. “Physical injuries aside, Meteor took some heavy damage. It’s going to take more time than normal to repair. I overheard the techs saying that the frame itself was twisted in such a way that they have to basically dismantle it to straighten it.”

“Shit.” Havoc, as eloquent as ever.

They fell into silence then. Meteor Assassin was a formidable machine, lower to the ground, built to take punches as much as dole them out. The thing was a beast. The Kaiju it had taken down, code named Vorax, had been a category IV, but was towards the higher end of the spectrum, nearly a category V. For Meteor to take that kind of damage was chilling. 

“Well. They’ll get fixed up and back to full power in no time.” Roy grinned, his hand seeking Riza’s under the table; he twined his fingers with hers, and she gave him a grateful squeeze. His words seemed to break a spell, and the group fell back into lighthearted chatter. 

At 0815 Roy and Riza excused themselves and headed back to their quarters to shower and freshen up for the meeting. Roy fairly pushed Riza into their tiny common room and had barely shut the door behind them when he pulled her close to him, releasing her hair from its clip and running his fingers through it before leaning down to kiss her. She grinned against his lips and tutted him on the nose with her finger. 

“Later,” she laughed. “We don’t have time now. If we keep Curtis waiting there’ll be hell to pay.”

“You’re no fun,” he mock pouted, stripping his shirt over his head and tossing it into the hamper on the way to the bathroom they shared. She followed suit, climbing into the shower behind him, exploring the echoes of his thoughts, and the hopes he had for later that evening. 

The drift did strange things to Rangers. The truth was that it was an impossible thing to step back from. Those pathways, those neural bridges, once forged, couldn’t really be broken. Even when not directly connected in the neural handshake, Rangers were drifting, albeit in a muted way. Riza allowed her musings to drift aimlessly as the hot water surged over her shoulders, little puffs of thought that she didn’t try to catch and examine. Her eyes closed as Roy’s arms encircled her, running a soapy washcloth over her back with particular care, and she tucked her head under his chin. 

_How much of this is drift_ , she thought, _and how much is history? We’ve been together such a long time_.

She could feel him smile into her hair.

“It’s not important. We’re together. That’s all that matters.” He answered her thoughts out loud, and she pulled back to meet his gaze.

“That’s all that matters?”

“Nothing else. Never has. Never will.”

They let the water run until it went cold, but they didn’t notice.

...

**Author's Note:**

> Respectfully dedicated to That Hoopy Frood, who has listened to me babble about this for far. too. long.


End file.
